Please note: we have been online over ten years, and we want The Trek BBS to continue as a free site. But if you block our ads we are at risk.Please consider unblocking ads for this site - every ad you view counts and helps us pay for the bandwidth that you are using. Thank you for your understanding.

Welcome! The Trek BBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans. Please login to see our full range of forums as well as the ability to send and receive private messages, track your favourite topics and of course join in the discussions.

If you are a new visitor, join us for free. If you are an existing member please login below. Note: for members who joined under our old messageboard system, please login with your display name not your login name.

It's not about inequality but survival of a tribe. All things being equal, how could you not consider reproductive fitness? Yes, these were individuals, but they were also part of a starship crew on a lifelong mission. What kind of medical officer does not consider the long term impact on the ship and crew?

Ok, I know, they only have an hour to tell a story....

That argument would work under some conditions but not these. In this case:
A) The slowest they expected to get home was 70 years, which is not enough generations for long term generational attrition to come into play.
B) Exponential population increase would strain the carrying capacity of the ship, so maintaining equilibrium is more important than supercharging reproduction potential.
C) The death rate among crewmembers is a more imminent concern than future reproduction rates. Skillsets that keep crew alive is more important than future hypothetical reproduction odds.
D) It's the 24th century, if ship population really became a problem a generation or two down the road they have all kinds of artificial means to produce offspring.

^ Ok Jirin, I get that. Good arguments for the longterm. Not to naysay, but here's where other things come in:

Mortality rate - you're assuming a steady curve, when in Starfleet, it can also spike in either direction due to unforseen circumstances: Borg assimilation, spacetime anomaly, political differences, virus, or alien insurrection. Each and every crewmember on the ship was vital to its survival, since the Delta Quadrant offered so many interesting and surprising new ways to destroy a starship and crew.

At any moment you might be facing the loss of half your crew. The Displaced aliens could just have easily beamed them into space and cut the risk of losing the ship to a fraction of a percent. The Devore could easily have made off with 90% of their crew in irons, but voluntarily pulled off due to the loss of credibility Voyager eventually represented.

My argument is not theoretical but in fact, a very real and pressing concern to maximize the crew's survivability in the short, medium and long terms. I see what you mean about equilibrium and mine is a worst case scenario. Of course the story was really about the EMH's growing friendship with the crew - and so, his humanity - and how it was putting him through an identity crisis that threatened his very matrix.

Given the risks of starship duty in the DQ, I still believe my hypothetical thought experiment may still have something to it. Not that the "chivalry" aspect could not have worked the other way, it very well could have. But in terms of reproduction? There would be no way to know what tomorrow held in store for each and every one of them. A human male's response might skew toward saving the female, and the female response might - actually I have no idea. In this way, the EMH might have been more PC than male, but more human than PC.

Or maybe this is just gender bias, but reproductive factors drive much of human behavior.

The issue in "Latent Image" wasn't from the Doc's original programming, but because he was left on and allowed to grow for many years. He SHOULD have been fine picking someone at random, but since he'd grown to know and liked someone better and chose them, the conflict arose.

I guess, but it seems like an example in Trek, like in "I, Borg" where the writers seem to think that a computer program or AI will just have break downs over relatively minor things that shouldn't really trip up a program.

Missing the point.
The EMH would have this issue if he was becoming sentient.
The dilemma isn't a computer one, it's a human emotional one. Dealing with death isn't a minor issue for anyone.

__________________
A Tiger doesn't loose sleep over the opinion of sheep.

What makes the whole episode cute is the fact the doctor regarded absolutism above anything else. His CPU (or is it in the ship) couldn't co-exist with his programming. Of course, he wasn't designed to be on all the time, and he wasn't designed to have exterior sub-routines. You said the doctor might be medically incorrect to be too absorbed about these matters.
The EMH didn't have a team of programmers to create him, but only Dr. Zimmerman. Dr. Zimmerman had his books and, it it just one person, the result would be his pet or Nemesis. He could have programmed his personality as a reflection of himself, but Dr. Zimmerman is 50 million lt. yrs away.